James hadley chase books in order

WRITER

1906 - 1985

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  James Chase (apothecary)

  English apothecary and Whig politician

  James Chase (c. 1650 – 23 June 1721), of Westhorpe House, Little Marlow, Buckinghamshire. was an English apothecary and Whig politician who sat in the English and British House of Commons from 1690 to 1710. From 1690 he was Court apothecary to King William III, Queen Anne and King George I.

  Early life

  Chase was the eldest son of John Chase of Littlebrook, Kent and his wife Elizabeth Soane, daughter of Dr Thomas Soane, canon of Windsor. His father was court apothecary to Charles II, and James II, having succeeded his own father in 1666, who was court apothecary to Charles I and, after the Restoration, to Charles II. Chase matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford on 15 December 1665, aged 15.^[1] He married Elizabeth Box, daughter of Sir Ralph Box of Cheapside, London on 17 November 1677.^[2] In 1684, he acquired his estate in Little Marlow and built Westhorpe House there during Queen Anne's reign.^[3]

  Court apothecary

  Chase was a Freeman of the Apothecaries’ Company

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  James Hadley Chase (real name René Brabazon Raymond) was born in London in 1906 and started his career as a bookseller. Following the depression, prohibition and the climate of Chicago gangsters in America just prior to the Second World War, Chase’s book trade experience made him realise that there was a big demand for gangster stories.

  So with the aid of a dictionary of American slang and reference books on the American underworld he wrote his first novel, No Orchids for Miss Blandish, over six weekends. The book achieved remarkable popularity and became one of the best-sold books of the decade. It was a stage play in London’s West End, was filmed in 1948 and in 1971 was remade by Robert Aldrich as The Grissom Gang.

  Chase was heavily influenced by the American crime and gangster scene and his earlier books fell within that genre, with many of them based in the US despite the fact that he only went there late in his life; much of his detail coming from encyclopaedias, maps and dictionaries.

  Hailed as the ‘thriller maestro of the generation’, Chase’s books (many